Behavior Design

Social psychology for social software.

Way back in 2004, I wanted to apply solid social psychology to the
design of online communities. Pundits in the then-nascent field of social
software were struggling with fundamental issues of human behavior and
social influence, issues I knew had already been studied by
psychologists... just not on the internet.

So, I enrolled at the University of Minnesota and spent two years
dredging scientific journals for empirical research that could be
applied to online social behavior. The results are catalogued here, from
meme theory to mob mentality. Now, we call it "Behavior
Design."